Lalitham Sundaram could mean “simple and beautiful”

Lalitham Sundaram could mean “simple and beautiful” or “simple is beautiful” or “beautiful simplicity” or all the above. And for the first half of its journey, the film looks set to earn these adjectives, despite the familiarity of its premise. This is a story of troubled siblings gathering reluctantly after the death of a parent – we’ve been there, seen that in cinema (good and bad) across the world and in India. The test each time, it goes without saying, is the treatment. 


What keeps Lalitham Sundaram going up to a point is its slice-of-life tone, a sense of humour, the unobtrusive handling of a sprinkling of progressive elements that holds out a promise of out-of-the-box thinking, and the potential in the team-up of two of Malayalam cinema’s most charismatic actors: Manju Warrier (also the film’s producer) and Biju Menon. 


Manju, for instance, plays the happily married Annie Mary Das, a busy CEO with two children and a supportive, stay-at-home husband who is self-confident enough to be unruffled by society’s efforts to shame unconventional men like him. The full name itself is noticeable without a song and dance being made about it: the siblings – Sunny, Annie and Jerry (played by Anu Mohan) – have been given their mother’s and father’s titles, not Dad’s alone, and she has not added the stamp of a spouse on to herself. Such families may be rare in real life, but they are not unknown. To see Malayalam cinema acknowledge their existence and point viewers towards a world of possibilities that may not have occurred to them is heartening.


When Jerry arrives at the family home in Kerala with his girlfriend, their father’s and Annie’s response too is an encouraging contrast to the conservative society they live in.


All this though is a set-up for disappointment as Lalitham Sundaram’s insubstantial writing and conservative core are gradually exposed, making it increasingly difficult to condone its lack of novelty. 


Perhaps it was foolish to hope, considering that director Madhu Wariar chose to open his film with formulaic establishing shots of the three cities in which the three siblings reside: Annie in Mumbai, Sunny in Kochi and Jerry in Bengaluru.


The trio travel to their parent’s sprawling house in the mountainous Kerala countryside at the request of their father (Raghunath Paleri). The moment they arrive, it is evident that all is not well between them. But Dad uses a bizarrely gruesome goodbye video from their dead mother (Zarina Wahab) to persuade them to stick around for a while and try to get along.


It is quite an achievement to make characters played by the formidable Manju Warrier and Biju Menon unmemorable, yet that is what Annie and Sunny turn out to be. The only person in Lalitham Sundaram who is somewhat engaging from start to finish is Annie’s perfect-to-the-point-of-being-unrealistic husband played by the inimitable Saiju Kurup. And Jerry’s partner Simy would have been a blip in the plot if it weren’t for actor Deepti Sati’s striking personality. 


An example is the picnic during which the entire clan sings and dances on a verdant landscape – the conceptualisation of the scene, the choreography, everything about it feels so clichéd.


When the reason for the searing tension between Sunny and Jerry is revealed late in the narrative, not only does it feel somewhat contrived, it also comes across as an attempt to whitewash years of unacceptable conduct on Sunny’s part, but neither point matters much because neither character has been written well enough for a viewer to feel invested in them.


The final half-hour with its big revelations and rapid succession of twists is the last straw. This is when Lalitham Sundaram reveals itself to be a conservative in progressive clothing, setting out to subtly – ever so subtly! – offer reassurance to traditionalists who might be uncomfortable with women for whom their profession is a priority and women who exercise their reproductive rights. It is not this review’s contention at all that women characters should be flawless. Certainly not. But flaws that pander to status-quoists deserve to be called out for what they are. 


Add to this the Madhuram-style eye-roll-worthy conviction with which Lalitham Sundaram reiterates the dominant social notion that single people cannot possibly be anything but lonely and miserable. 


These plot elements are disappointing backward steps from the unapologetically forward-thinking mindsets on display in last year’s Chathur Mukham – ironically, starring Manju Warrier and coming from her production house – and Sara’s, among an array of Malayalam films over the years that have taken remarkably liberal stands on issues the rest of India’s film industries avoid completely. 


Madhu Wariar’s Lalitham Sundaram is beset by confusion over what it wants to say, further exacerbated by its unimaginative story and storytelling. Simple and simplistic are not the same thing. There is nothing sundaram about such simplistic treatment of complex social realities. 


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